Astronomers spot blue 'beast' of an explosion in the universe - CNN

Their ephemeral glow and fading process is much quicker than a supernova, an increasingly bright star that explodes and ejects most of its mass before dying.

The most well-known of these three events belongs to AT2018COW, or "The Cow," a rare event detected in 2018 that was likely the birth of a black hole or neutron star.

"We thought there were only two ways to produce them — by collapsing a massive star with a gamma ray burst or two neutron stars merging," said Margutti, who is also a member of Northwestern's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.

That's the key ingredient."

The black hole or neutron star is helping to drive the explosion of matter, or outflow, of the burst.

One of the other intriguing things about this explosion is where it occurred, in a dwarf galaxy near the Eridanus constellation.

"We know that the star that is involved here is very different from those that produce [gamma ray bursts], and that the environment around CSS161010 has much larger density than in [gamma ray bursts]," Margutti said.

Right now, the best explanation for the cause behind this FBOT is that "a peculiar path of [star] evolution leads to a stellar explosion," Margutti said.

Whatever is left behind by that explosion, whether it be a black hole or neutron star, powers the FBOT.

The researchers said they can't rule out that this is potentially a star being disrupted by a medium-sized black hole, but they favor the massive star explosion scenario.